Killing Civilians in Afghanistan
The issue of the U.S. military killing civilians in its battles against the Taliban in Afghanistan is starting to gather steam once again. Recently, Afghan President Hamid Karzai blasted the U.S. for not being more vigilant and said that his people "can no longer accept casualties the way they occur."
In early March, insurgents ambushed a convoy of U.S. troops in Jalalabad. As the troops fled, they fired on civilians and their cars, killing 19 people, an act that one U.S. commander said Tuesday left him feeling "deeply, deeply ashamed and terribly sorry." (At the time of the incident, U.S. troops seized photo and video footage from journalists covering the aftermath.)
Later in the month, the U.S. military killed 13 civilians in a bombing raid. And the Belfast Telegraph reports that Afghan authorities say 21 more civilians were killed in a raid in the village of Soro, near Sangin in Helmand province, on the same day the U.S. commander was making his above apology for the March 4 incident. The U.S. military denied the reports.
A spokesman for the US forces, Major William Mitchell, declared that the troops had killed a "significant" number of insurgents in firefights and the subsequent bombing.
"We don't have any reports of civilian casualties" he said. "There are enemy casualties - I think the number is significant."
One problem with this statement is that it's the same thing the U.S. military says every time one of these incidents occurs, and then it's often forced to eat crow after it turns out that innocent people were killed. The Economist reports that there have been five incidents in total since March where Western forces have been accused of killing civilians.
But the U.S. military isn't the only one who may be killing civilians. Human Rights Watch finds that civilian deaths from insurgent attacks in Afghanistan have increased dramatically over the past 15 months, according to a Voice of America report. The Human Rights Watch report says that many of the anti-government forces are deliberately ignoring internationally agreed upon laws of war and protection of civilians' rights.
6:03 PM ET | 05-10-2007 | permalink
